We anticipated a favourable breeze to get us to Gedser and maybe beyond today onto an anchorage and we were off quite early, starting the engine at 07:15 in order to exit the harbour and switching it off 15 minutes later. The wind was blowing from the south, as predicted and again, they got the strength right in that it was a F4, about 12 knots. This force and direction meant that we were sailing at 5-6 knots and initially, at least, I thought we had a chance to make it all the way to an anchorage off Rügen, 70 miles away. It was quite a chilly start but it looked promising for more sun later, as the cloud/sun ratio improved, which it did but sadly in conjunction, the wind lost some of its’ strength and we concluded that we had no chance of making it to Rügen at any civilized time so we reverted to the original plan of stopping off at Gedser, 29 miles from Burgstaaken. We knew that the orientation of the marina in Gedser was such that we would be in a sheltered location and as the sun was now shining brightly, we looked forward to an afternoon on the boat, sunbathing and reading.

As I’ve said previously, Gedser is situated right at the tip of the Danish island of Falster and its’ main raison d’etre is as a ferry terminal to Roscoff and its’ main claim to fame was that the detective Sarah Lund in the great Scandi noir series ‘The Killing’ was banished there as a punishment for her mishandling of the case in the first series. I must say that the marina is rather pleasant, if somewhat isolated and we were pleased to be able to tie up alongside a pontoon, close to the fuel berth at 13:30. Our only excitement at coming in was to have to get out of the buoyed channel to make room for the ferry which bowled past us, there was no way he was giving way to sail!

There is a nature reserve which starts less than 25 yards from the boat and the very first sound we heard after cutting off the engine was a cuckoo, lovely! As we were so close to the fuel berth, Julie suggested that it might be an idea to fill up, especially as the tank had written all over it that it contained diesel from non-bio sources. Now there has been a great deal written on the pros and cons of biodiesel, cons being that the ‘diesel bug’, a microorganism that can turn diesel into a non-useable slime, is more likely to invade biodiesel –filled tanks and also biodiesel leaves acidic residues when burned that can affect engine seals. You can take preventative measures with the former by the use of an additive (it also increases the ppm of Sulphur in the diesel, back to the levels found in the ‘normal’ stuff) and newer engines, such as ours, are immune from the effects of the acidity as the seals are more modern. Be that as it may, wherever possible we put ordinary diesel in and here was our opportunity, so having just secured the boat nicely, we set about undoing all the warps to pull her back 10 yards or so to be within distance of the fuel hose.

Very commonly in these parts, the fueling systems are fully automated and here was no exception. You place your credit card in the machine and once your details have been verified, it starts the motor on the fuel pump and off you go. Except that it didn’t, no matter what combination of card and button-pressing we tried. I therefore set off in search of assistance to be told that the havnemeister (harbourmaster) would come after 6 but here was a number to call him. Of course I’d left my phone on the boat and I was on the way back when I came across a gentleman wearing overalls (it transpired that he’d been working  on his boat, he wasn’t anything to do with the authorities) but he did have a phone and he called the harbourmaster, who happened to be in Copenhagen! However, help in the form of his assistant could be with us earlier as he was on the way back and within an hour, he’d arrived and after re-booting the whole system, we were good to go. Whilst chatting he told me that some poor unfortunate had been struck by lightning in Copenhagen that day but apparently it hadn’t killed him, which I find hard to believe – zillions of volts coursing through you and you live to tell the tale? I know it happens but still incredible (according to t’internet, only 1 in 10 people struck are actually killed!).

Having successfully fueled up and manoeuvered back to our original spot, we settled down to enjoy the lovely, warm sun in this pleasant spot. Our idyll was somewhat tarnished when a large catamaran, which is very rare in these parts as most harbours are too small for them, insisted on placing itself within 80cm from our bow, annoying when they had acres of space and as they’re so wide, getting out past them could be a problem if the wind shifted to the west, which fortunately it didn’t.